You bring up some good points; sorry if I seemed combative in my
previous post.
I thought it more arguing your position vigoursly than combative. No
need for an apology.
I've been thinking... If Trisquel has removed Firefox in part
because
of its suggestion of non-free software and add-ons, would it be fair
to ask why game emulators are not seen as similarly problematic?
Would
the use and availability of these emulators represent an
unacceptable
breach of truly FOSS ethics? I do not wish to start an argument, I'm
genuinely curious as to how free software ethics regarding emulators
play out.
The Free Software Distribution Guidelines say Trisquel may not
contain or recommend proprietary software and remain compliant. To
prevent Firefox recommending proprietary software we have to change
the code. Firefox code is free but the branding and trademark(s) are
not. Thus Abrowser in Trisquel is Firefox, minus proprietary
recommendations and branding, plus a few privacy enchancing patches.
The same may not contain recommend proprietary software criterion is
what is being applied to the emulators. The emulators are free
software, presumably the boot ROM code they contain if any is also
free software. Report a bug if you find differently. Therefore
there is nothing stopping us including it. It is quite conceivable
that somewhere on the Internet are free as in freedom games for some
of the emulators.
If it had been stipulated that the ability to use proprietary
software blocked inclusion, then GNU/Linux would itself have to be
blocked as it can run proprietary software. So the fact that
emulators have few if any games that are free that work with them is
simply a comparison of how much free software there is available for
a given free platform.
To clarify, what I mean is that game emulators like FCEUX and ZSNES
all have an implied "suggestion" of using non-free games. After all,
the purpose of these (albeit FOSS) programs is to play proprietary
ROMs. With this in mind, I'm considering removing the emulators and
ROM collections from my netbook. Regards.
Freedom 0 is:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose
Therefore we do not judge these emulators by their implicit purpose.
Instead we recommend you look for free software games that work with
them if you have the interest.
